Current container processing plants, such as bottling processing plants, are often required to handle a wide variety of container products. In order to accommodate the many and varied products and container shapes and sizes, current plants require fast and convenient processing line changeover. Often, expensive servo-driven mechanisms along with numerous container control feedscrews and starwheels are utilized to complete this function, resulting in both expensive systems and extensive labor requirements. Container processing equipment and machinery such as cappers, fillers, and labellers currently must raise and lower to accommodate container heights each time a different size container is used because of the standard and universal approach of transporting containers by their base and transferring the containers from the conveyor to the processing equipment. Additionally, due to the standard convention of using conveyors which transfer containers by their base, it is often necessary to utilize multiple conveyors in order to bring the containers through the entire processing line so that each processing station may be visited. The resulting configuration is inefficient, expensive, and quite large.
In certain types of known bottle conveyors, pincers or pivotal levers are used in conjunction with half collars so that bottles are gripped below an annular neck flange formed on the bottle. Each half collar and pincer set combination are positioned on individual plates so that one half of the circumference of the bottle neck is surrounded by the half collar with the pivotal levers closing around the remainder of the circumference to hold the bottle against the half collar. The individual plates are rigidly connected to form a conveyor which is capable of rectilinear travel. Each plate includes a set of wheels which follow a set of linear rails. Further, the pivotal levers are configured so that they open to release their grip on the bottle when a second set of wheels, which are attached to the non-engaging end of the levers, are squeezed together. An example of such a device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,530,433 to Cucchetto et al. This type of conveyor, however, has proven to be unsatisfactory in conveying bottles or other containers having annular neck flanges for a number of reasons. First, although the half collar and lever pair combination is able to support bottles at the neck, the configuration requires that the bottles be loaded into the device from the leading edge of each plate, as determined by the direction of travel of the conveyor. This requires that individual bottles be brought to a position between the individual plates so that the bottles can be inserted into the semi-circular opening provided by the half collar. This type of loading is extremely impractical and inefficient, often requiring the conveyor itself to be stopped as each bottle is loaded into the individual half collars. Second, this type of conveyor is not capable of curvilinear travel, which vastly reduces the utility of the conveyor. Third, because each bottle is gripped by the pincer arrangement, the adaptability of the conveyor to various tasks is limited. Often, provision must be made to release the bottles so gripped. Additionally, numerous other pitfalls are associated with this type of conveyor, including, but not limited to, its inability to perform inverted operations.